Most consumer electronics products such as those found in the home feature central processing units (CPUs) typically including a microprocessor data/address bus-connected to read-only memory (ROM), read-and-write memory (RAM) and other associated circuitry that is customized to perform a particular function, e.g. digital signal processing in a TV's closed-caption decoder. The data/address bus is internal to the consumer electronic product, and effectively is thereby rendered special-purpose and of no general-purpose processing capability. Various prior art techniques have been proposed to enhance the interactivity of TV's, for example, and to provide a useful interconnection between two or more consumer electronic products such as a TV and an entertainment or education device or a central computer.
Some such proposed interactivity enhancements are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,807,031, issued Feb. 21, 1989 and entitled Interactive Video Method and Apparatus. Another such proposed enhancement is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,160 issued Apr. 4, 1995 and entitled System and Method for Identifying a Television Program. The former teaches an external electro-optic or RF transducer for receiving modulated luminance-encoded data that has been invisibly added to the visible normal television signal prior to broadcast, for the remote control of entertainment devices operatively connected to the transducer and associated decoding circuitry. The latter teaches an RF transducer and associated decoder circuitry for recording the television broadcast and using such recorded frames to verify viewership and to communicate such confirmation to a remote central host computer or verification service.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,304 entitled Remote Link Adapter for Use in TV Broadcast Data Transmission System teaches a hybrid system for transmitting and receiving high-speed digital information via a vestigial sideband video modulator at a central broadcast site and a receiver at a remote TV site, where the data may be used by data terminal equipment (DTE) or a computer such as a PC.
None of the prior art suggests providing a consumer electronics product such as a television with a hardware port into the product's CPU or a standard hardware and software communication protocol therefor for connection therewith of a variety of external consumer electronics devices via a messaging service such as the existing paging network.